A few weeks ago I was privileged to be invited to speak at the American University in Blagoevgrad. It was not exactly the university who invited me, though, but one of the clubs they have – the Business Club.

To be honest here, it is absolutely rare to see such a motivated and already educated group of young people. We spoke about the world of presenting, some tips and tricks on how they can stay up to date and always ahead in their game and lastly, about personal branding and it’s importance.

…of course they also asked me if I did mistakes when starting 356labs and I shared just 3 of them. We didn’t have the time to share at least 20 more…

Once again – great time with the students, who were also from all over the world, fantastic job by the organizers and already looking forward to go back and spend some time with them again!

A month ago I got an invitation from the local chapter of Startup Grind to speak about 356labs, my story and the presentation world. It was a long, but incredibly interesting and more importantly honest conversation.

I try to consume everything that Simon Sinek produces and probably that is the reason I saw the video above and stayed up until late in the evening one day to watch and then reflect on what he said.

Stop here for now and watch the whole video.Please. Yes, it will take you 1 hour, but I promise you – it’s worth your time.

Welcome back. Now you may be wondering why I am writing this blog post? The answer is very selfish – because I want to keep myself publicly accountable. This way I won’t have any excuses in front of myself and in front of you to not do what I learned from this video. Here are the 2 “accountability lists” I prepared for myself:

The personal one:

When going out with friends, family or my girlfriend, leave my phone at home or have it with me, but don’t use it except in an emergency.

Don’t put my phone next to me on the table when on a meeting or use it while waiting for someone. Notice the world.

I can’t summarize this one in 1 sentence, so please read. It’s an important and an interesting one. That’s why it’s number 10.

When I started 356labs, it was clear to me that we were going to offer both company trainings and opened trainings in which individual people who want to learn more about the world of presenting would enroll. That’s what we did and that’s what we continue to do. Let me tell you a story about our first opened course, though, because I believe it’s a good lesson of what a founder of a company must be ready for.

See, we do not have our own training room yet. We rent such. And so I rented one of the most creative places in Sofia, Bulgaria for our first opened course. At the end of the day our we were teaching storytelling & presentation design. The place needed to be… special. I didn’t want a hotel room.So far so good. I rented the place(meaning, I paid for it — that’s important and you will see why) and a day before the event I went there to set up everything.

I walked in that place and it was… gosh, it looked ugly. Everything was covered in dust — chairs, tables, everything. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. The trash cans were not cleaned. Yes, including the one in the toilet.

That’s not what I paid for, I said to myself! Problem was there was no time to go and complain to the host. The course was starting tomorrow morning! I needed to do something myself because one of the things about our trainings is that I want us to deliver an experience. An incredible experience to our students. That means that not only the content and our materials must be top level, but every single other thing should be too — the venue, the food, the organization, the communication prior the event, everything.

What happens next is my lesson for all of you— I went and cleaned all the dust. Every single chair. Every single table. One by one. I cleaned the floor. I went and changed the trash bags everywhere. Yes, the one in the toilet too. And yes, you are right, I didn’t like it and I wasn’t happy I was doing it, but at the same time, I knew this would pay off…

On the next day the training went incredibly well. Many of the people who came and paid for the event are now coming to every single one of our events and recommend us to others. So to all of you founders, co-founders and all of you who truly care about your customers — get ready to do things you have never ever thought you would if you really and I mean really, want to deliver incredible experiences.

P.S. After this training, we gave this room another chance and hosted another course there. We were faced with the same and that was the last time we rented it. We now moved to a new place which is a true state of art. The place that I was looking for from the start of 356labs…

And no, I don’t want to sound like, you know, I am one of those guys that work so much. Noup. Not at all. I just want you to understand that when you are starting a business and you start it alone or with a co-founder(s), there is no one else you can count on. What I mean is that when there is a slight issue or a big problem with:

Your website

Your sales

Your marketing campaigns

Your payments

Anything else

… it will be you that will have to fix it. This is completely not the case when you work in an organization and you can always forward that problematic e-mail or some task to the people above you. It’s just not.

So my lesson here is one that you have already heard before — get ready to work countless hours because believe it or not, sometimes even straightforward things like purchasing stickers to give away at an event, for example, can take you 2 days of pretty intense communication between you and the printing company(guess why I am using this example?).